In reality, she will then distance herself from film sets and cinema. She only appears on rare occasions on the big screen. She only made seven films, including OSS 117 takes a vacation by Pierre Kalfon and Le Maestro by Claude Vital. His last film dates from 1983: It’s going to be sad, the Pierre Sisser.
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There will be a little television and theater during this decade of the 70s, but nothing more. This star status that was promised to him vanished when everything seemed to be on track. His first appearance in the cinema dates back to 1959, in The Dredgersthe first feature film by Jean-Pierre Mocky. She also played in Captain Fracasse by Pierre Gaspard-Huit, with Jean Marais, Arsène Lupine vs. Arsène Lupine by Édouard Molinaro and Sandokan, the tiger of Borneo by Umberto Lenzi. Without forgetting a few television series: If Perrault was told to me, At the theater tonight et The lives of others.
Time X and Igor Bogdanoff
From the 1980s, after leaving Paris and settling in the Gers, it was in the shadows that Geneviève Grad acted. She is in turn an antiques dealer, organizer of cultural events for the town of Vendôme where she works with Annie, one of Charlie Chaplin’s daughters, and production assistant for TF1 on the show Time of the Bogdanoff brothers. She met Igor in the 1970s, after leaving Paris for Gers. They were a couple and had a child together, Dimitri, born in 1976.
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It was therefore far from the glitz and glitter of showbiz that she rebuilt her life, also sheltered from any media hype. In 1993, after 11 years of living together, she married the architect Jean Guillaume. It was he who announced his death “at the end of a courageous fight against cancer”, he said. At Free Middayhe confided that his wife still received requests for dedications by mail, from Germany, Russia or Ukraine.
Geneviève Grad was 80 years old. She died at the Blois Polyclinic, in Loir-et-Cher.
“Douliou Doulio Saint-Tropez”, that’s her!
You may not have known it, but alongside her acting career, Geneviève Grad had a singing career. It was in the 60s, when she triumphed with The policeman of Saint-Tropez. The two are not strangers.
Everyone has in mind the music which accompanies the first part of the famous saga: this catchy twist typically from the yé-yé period, composed by Raymond Lefebvre and Paul Mauria, to which this heady chorus is sung, the famous “Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez”. Who do we find behind the microphone? The young Geneviève Grad, the one who plays Nicole, the daughter of the quartermaster-chief Cruchot played by Louis de Funès.
Released on 45 rpm, the song was a great success and not only in France. Taken up by Quebec singer Jenny Rock in 1965, then by others in the following decades, it will benefit from international notoriety.
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Even today, the title is inseparable from the city of Saint-Tropez and the spirit of the era.
Pour The Constable in New YorkGeneviève Grad will do it again with another song that has also become a success: “The boys are nice”. She will also record other titles such as “Mais ou s’en va les mots”, “Tout just un an an”, and “Almost as much as we”, with Christian Chevalier and his orchestra. After 1966, the song will be over…
